Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation method used in high-speed wireless networks. However, waveforms generated using traditional OFDM techniques exhibit noise-like properties, and thus OFDM waveforms tend to suffer from relatively large peak-to-average ratios (PARs), which in turn may lead to significant distortion noise and low power efficiency in peak-limited channels. In addition, under relatively harsh channel conditions, transmitted OFDM signals tend to incur significant timing offsets and carrier frequency offsets. Because traditional OFDM techniques tend not to be robust under harsh channel conditions, significant timing offsets may result in inter-block interference, and significant carrier frequency offsets may result in inter-carrier interference. Both of these forms of interference are detrimental to the bit error rates and/or symbol error rates of received signals.
In order to estimate the channel and to address timing and carrier frequency offsets, some traditional OFDM devices transmit a preamble in conjunction with and preceding an information-bearing OFDM sequence. The receiver may perform a conjugate correlation of the received preamble and an expected preamble to determine estimates for the timing and carrier frequency offsets. In addition, when the preamble also includes channel training information, the preamble may be used to perform channel estimation. Although transmission of a preamble is relatively simple to implement, a tradeoff to implementing this technique is that a significant amount of bandwidth is used solely for preamble transmission, and thus for synchronization, acquisition, and, when channel training information is available, also for channel estimation.
In addition, the channel estimate naturally has some error, when compared with actual channel conditions. Traditional OFDM transmission methods may experience an increase in channel estimation errors on the receiver side, which may result from non-linear amplification, by a power amplifier device on the transmitter side, of transmit information sequences having higher than desired PARs. Such non-linear transmission may cause significant out-of-band interference (i.e., interference outside the signal bandwidth, such as in the adjacent channels and/or other user channels), and also may induce undesired in-band interference, which adds distortion to the transmitted information bits and also to the channel training information. Furthermore, improper synthesis of the channel training information may lead to further channel estimation errors at the receiver. Thus, non-linear amplification of high peak-to-average power ratio signals and improper channel training information design may, in the receiver, result in unacceptably high channel estimation errors and excessively high bit error rates.
In some OFDM systems, pilot symbol assisted modulation (PSAM) techniques are used to estimate multipath channels and remove their effects from a received OFDM symbol. Using PSAM, a data component of a transmit signal is modulated onto a plurality of data-bearing subcarriers within an available frequency band, and pilot signals (referred to simply as “pilots” herein) are modulated onto a plurality of non-overlapping pilot subcarriers, where each subcarrier may be indicated by a subcarrier index. Traditional pilot signal designs include evenly-spaced, constant-power pilots, meaning that the number of data-bearing subcarriers between sets of adjacent pilot subcarriers is equal, and the power contained in each pilot is substantially equal. Evenly-spaced, constant-power pilots have assisted in achieving adequate system performance in many OFDM systems.
However, in some systems, guard bands consisting of a plurality of null edge subcarriers are designated at the lower and upper edges of the frequency band (i.e., the power contained in the null edge subcarriers is essentially zero). Although this has the beneficial effect of limiting the amount of spectral regrowth that may encroach on neighboring channels, the width of the guard band, in some systems, interferes with the ability to provide evenly-spaced pilots across neighboring channel boundaries (e.g., discontinuities in the even spacing occur across the guard bands). Accordingly, non-optimal results have been observed in such systems. More particularly, even though implementation of PSAM techniques may improve channel estimation performance and symbol error rate (SER) performance, performance improvements may be less significant in systems that include a guard band when compared with systems that do not.
Another limitation of the traditional pilot signal designs (i.e., designs that include evenly-spaced, constant-power pilots) is that such designs are not extensible to multiple transmit antenna systems, such as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems. In such systems, multiple co-located or distributed antennas are used simultaneously to transmit wireless signals that include the same data or different data that occurs within a same data stream. The desirability of such systems is growing, because the transmission by multiple antennas has been shown to improve diversity performance, thus reducing the receiver demodulation bit error rate. In addition, data throughput and link range may be increased without increasing bandwidth or transmit power.
As mentioned above, inclusion of the guard band may be desirable in order to limit the amount of spectral regrowth that may encroach on neighboring channels. Accordingly, for systems in which null edge subcarriers and pilot subcarriers are allocated within a signal's frequency spectrum (e.g., systems in which a guard band is used in conjunction with PSAM techniques), what are needed are methods and apparatus for generating and communicating signals with improved channel estimation and/or SER performance over traditional techniques. What are further needed are methods and apparatus for generating and communicating such signals in systems that implement multiple transmit antennas (e.g., MIMO, MISO, and other systems). Other features and characteristics of the inventive subject matter will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background.